2145: The Year We Forgot Ourselves

Beep…………..Beep…………...Beep……………………..Bee

Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep

The supersonic soft voice sounded gently and stereotypically from a hidden speaker.

“Transformation completed.”

Silence.

Beep…..Beep…..Beep…..Beep…..Beep…..Beep…..Beep…..Beep…..Beep…..

The sound continued.

I felt wet and sticky. Hands lifted me and wiped my body with soft terry cloths.

“He made it,” said a female voice.

Was I even allowed to perceive the voice as female? I had to be careful.

It wasn’t like a hundred years ago, when I was born.

A man was a man, and a woman was a woman.

That changed a lot during my lifetime.

The “Colloktive” had decided.

It was no longer appropriate to think of Homo Futurus as man or woman. Abolished.

Genes no longer mattered.

What one Homo Futurus could do, anyone could do. That was the maxim.

So could we.

I had heard it so many times that I no longer really knew whether I was a man or a woman.

I had lived as both.

I became a father at a young age. A beautiful woman named Sarah gave birth to our child. A girl. She was called Kim.

Sarah wanted nothing more to do with me. The child was handed over to the Colloktive. She went her own way with education and career. So did I.

I met Ben, who fell in love with me. And I with him.

I found love, and a partner.

We stayed together for all the years Ben lived.

Unfortunately, he didn’t make it.

But I had a strong heart, and my body was maintained through exercise and the Colloktive’s special diet, which I had helped to develop.

It had no taste, but Homo Futurus did not require taste or scent stimuli for survival.

Thus, equal amounts of food could be produced everywhere on Earth.

The base units varied slightly depending on the climate zone, but the quality of proteins was what mattered. Carbohydrates for energy. Minerals. Vitamins.

These could be added depending on the age of the Homo Futurus. That was the final variation.

Cookbooks became obsolete.

So did that phenomenon I remembered from ancient social channels:

Homo Sapiens cooking food. Having names and genders.

Food was forgotten now. Gender likewise.

There had once been suffering, especially among women.

Childbirth. A danger to both mother and child.

Outdated in the era of Homo Futurus.

We still had names and emotions for each other.

I had lived my life with Ben, which once had been unthinkable and considered deviant.

There used to be a norm of man-woman relationships, called marriage.

A monstrous gender-political prison invented in ancient times by patriarchal oppressors.

And yet, even in those distant days, there had been examples of so-called homosexual relationships.

Now, we simply live with the individual who suits us.

No one is bothered anymore if a man lives with a man, and one perhaps expresses themselves as a woman.

Or a man with a woman. Or a woman with a woman.

We wear what suits us, style our hair as we wish.

If a woman wants a beard, she receives pills and grows one.

If a man wants breasts to impress, he also gets pills.

Sex still functions, of course.

But in the year 2145 – which we must have reached by now – it is only for fun.

No reproduction takes place between the sexes.

Fortunately, that has been taken over by the Colloktive.

I can feel I am being wrapped in cloth now.

Placed in the incubation unit and given a feeding tube.

I remember every detail. I had been closely involved in the development through the years.

I am also fitted with devices to remove urine and feces.

Everything must be beautiful and clean.

The same had occurred not long ago – or at least, that’s how I remember it – when I turned 99.

I was picked up from my cubus and brought to the Transformation.

Kind people took care of me, placed me in a bed, inserted the feeding tube and excretion devices.

As it ended, it now begins again.

I entered a dove-blue cell, where my bed was placed in the center of the room.

No windows, only dim light and tones from an embedded speaker.

I couldn’t place where it was.

Everywhere and nowhere.

Through my feeding tube, I received transformation minerals and medication that would cause my body to dissolve.

The only part that would remain intact was my memory, in a brain that, during the process, would be renewed with vital and fresh synapses.

But we had invented a process for storing memory in a databank during the transformation.

Nine months later, it was played back into the restored brain.

And here I now lay, a newborn infant, with a lifetime of knowledge and memories in a new body, which I would once again explore through a new childhood.

If there had been unfortunate physiological damage in the old body, it was corrected now.

Genes clipped in the right places, diseases would not repeat themselves.

I simply had to grow again and go back to school.

School would be advanced from day one – for we could all read, write, and function in fields like math, physics, and chemistry.

We practically started university on the first school day –

but with a desire to run into the light and play ball.

This was encouraged, to best develop our physicality.

We played in our child-bodies with adult minds.

We had no childish emotions.

No early crushes or experiments with alcohol or mind-expanding substances.

We were already mind-expanded, and psychological imbalances had been eliminated.

We did not miss parents either.

The Colloktive was our secure base,

and since we all knew our parents had died long ago, no one missed them.

Attraction to same or opposite sex no longer occurred,

though we remembered it once played a role in our former life.

We – the new generation of Homo Futurus – were born genderless.

A rule had been introduced:

Only individuals who reached the age of 99 could be offered transformation.

We had strong genes and physicality, ensuring that we could be offered yet another transformation 99 years later.

The Colloktive was like a supercomputer, thinking for us, ensuring ideal conditions for everyone around the globe.

When the last gender-bearing individuals had been transformed,

we would live happily ever after together.

We would work and take time off, travel if we wished –

though, truthfully, no one had done that for many years, as far back as I could recall.

Conditions were the same everywhere:

sufficient nutrition and a suitable climate,

so there was no reason to travel.

Images of distant places could easily be summoned on the Wall in our cubus.

Life could only follow its entirely usual course, governed by the Colloktive.

We were happy,

and I was now on my way to the replay of my life in a new and improved body –

so what was there not to be satisfied with?